How to get up fast after you fall

Minor shifts in your attitude and habits can help sustain major boosts and build your long-term resilience.

Starting new habits – that’s what January is all about, isn’t it? There’s never a year when starting something new is a bad call, yet, this year with the new variants constantly changing our scenarios, resolutions seem more important than ever, and even more vulnerable to being abandoned mid-way.

Faced with wearying uncertainty, the number of Americans who describe their mental health as “excellent” held firm at a two-decade low of 34%, according to a Gallup poll conducted last November. In the UK, around one in six adults experienced some form of depression in the summer of last, compared with about 10% before the pandemic.

While it may be tempting to set grand ambitions about how to “COVID-proof” your resilience and build unshakable inner peace, the key is often to start small. In her book Micro-Resilience, Bonnie Saint John describes how adopting minor shifts…